The Alien from Kansas
by Mister Mxyztplk
Summary: My take on the DC Universe, specifically revolving around the Justice League. However, no knowledge of the DC Universe is needed. The writing style is influenced by more literary authors such as John Irving and Cormac McCarthy, with an emphasis on smaller character moments, tragedy, and theme. It has a planned ending, but I don't know how long it'll take to get there.
1. Chapter 01

Perhaps she would have pondered the deep red sunlight as the color of blood, would her blood be red. Though reflected as it was through the stained glass, the light splattered ornate walls with any color she would wish to choose. It slid across her features as she moved, the light, growing in cosmic similarity to the movement of stars, the milky centers of far away galaxies, and that, in turn, lead to growing apprehension and primal fear. The growing pressure in her chest of things moved beyond her grasp, beyond her control. The realization that praying could calm none of it, but determined to try.

Her steps echoed on walls older than her mother, the mother before that, and perhaps a hundred generations stacked. Stone dug raw from the ground, pulled to its resting place, and pushed up onto stacks upon stacks. Bound to the history of her species more tightly than the literal mortar used to bind it.

She stepped through long shadows, sprung from colored glass edges, by window frames; by rows of tall figures, ancient heroes, figures of ancient prophets, all of it soon to be lost forever.

Ahead, the ordered rows of benches, humble, worn from use by those hundred generations, her mother and mother before her. Among them, more light. This time small crystals, from the Jewel Mountains, placed with consideration, with purpose, to light each path to each bench.

To offset the deep red sunlight, once so nourishing, now a portend for the death of a world.

Lara found the bench she wanted and sat. Her grandmother held her hand on this bench, the first time she was here, many sunsets ago. Her mother didn't have the same feeling for nostalgia and Lara's adolescence was a series of new benches, all at the whims of an arbitrary selecting method she was never privy to.

Until Lara drifted away.

Into adulthood.

Lara's gaze drifted through the nearly empty church. Once filled to capacity, now, like her planet, on the edge of extinction. There were mothers, always mothers, with children. A few old people.

Weariness emanated from her, pushed her downward, collapsing her bones. Her head sank low, tapered chin resting against her flat chest. A mass of cranial ridges, of various length and thickness, ringed her scalp. The tips rested among the spines of shoulders as she let gravity curl her pose. Thin, hair-like filaments, made a soft sound as the motion pulled them over her face.

Would her blood red, perhaps it would have rushed to blush her cheeks, but it was not. And the keratin on her cheeks wouldn't allow them to change color if it was.

Lara-El, the last mother on planet Krypton, prayed.

Hello, sister. Are you well?

Lara sank in the question, drown in it, before finally lifting her head, pushing herself back into consciousness. She couldn't decide if the interruption was welcome or not, but the priest had a genuine look of concern on her face.

I haven't been to church since I was little.

I'm not surprised. The Science Academy has done a good job of pushing away tradition faith. The priest smiled lightly and continued. The poor without fables of gods, are reliant on fables of the rich, she said.

Lara glanced at the brightly colored cloth over her shoulder and pooled around her waist. I'm not sure why I wore these today. I still have my traditional robes. Somewhere.

There's no dress code, sister. All are welcome.

A nearby child noticed the conversation, recognized it for distraction against its mother's attention. It slid delicately toward the two women, an unintentional spy.

You still believe, Lara asked, unsure if she was asking a question.

Of course. Rao doesn't cease to exist because a group of grouchy old men in a tower declare it so. The world is a pendulum. All things far away, become close again, and vice versa. Pain. Happiness. Belief. The very sun, named after him, reminds us by its cycles of dimming and brightening.

Lara couldn't meet her gaze. Her eyes would give it away, the future she knew was inevitable, the future that loomed fat and red right outside the window, would move over her, would spill out of her, would destroy what little time the world had left. She would spatter the ornate walls with it, her guilt and horror.

Rao will shine brightly again, as it once did, reminding us of his way. The priest followed Lara's gaze, to the front window. Beyond.

The giant, red sun, filled most of the sky.

The glory of Rao.

Have you been a priest all your life? Lara returned again, to face the priest, reengaging, on her last day in church.

I am fifth generation, in fact. My mother, her mother, mothers before her.

You were given up at birth, then, raised by the church?

Yes, I never knew my mother or father.

Very traditional. The old way.

Perhaps, someday, the priest said lightly, it will be the new way, again.

You're comfortable with parents giving away their children?

The moment right, the priest sat beside Lara on her grandmother's favorite bench.

A child raised in love, knows only love. Rao is the love of all mothers and the love of all fathers. Of all Kryptonians. We are all his love.

She looked at the marriage band on Lara's wrist. Do you have a daughter you're thinking about giving to the church?

What makes us Kryptonian, sister?

That is a complicated question. The words of Rao have plain passages, but there are many more than could be interpreted differently with the right spin. The priest ran the words over in her head, choosing carefully, practiced her response. I may not have the necessary skill of a clear answer.

The colors in her lap insisted on Lara's attention.

I'm a biologist. Geneticist, actually. Being Kryptonian from a biological point of view, that's easy. That's a specific thing. Trillions of little parts, pieced together in a very specific way. Parts that way separate us from flamebirds, or thought beasts, or Kypto, by husband's dog.

Lara's hands interlaced, writhed, as if an occult ritual was being performed, as if somehow all the energy inside her could be expended out the weaving of her twelve, multi-jointed fingers. It had the opposite effect she intended. Any calm inside her was now spun into the tangled mess of her anxiety.

If I were to take those trillion little parts, and shake them in a jar… Any resolve left in Lara was pushed down as her eyes betrayed her, their inevitable future coming to pass. If I were to dump it out…

Would whatever came out of that jar, be Kryptonian?

Lara tried to affirm with a motion of her head, but her head felt as heavy as a stack of stones, her real question buried, underneath.

Would whatever came out of that jar, know Rao's love?

His word says Rao created us in his image. But look at you, at me. At this child. The priest motioned her hand to the nearby unintentional spy. It closed on the priest with the energy of something just waiting to be asked.

That image already takes so many forms. Forms that change constantly, from birth to adulthood. All throughout life. Intentionally and unintentionally.

The child moved under the priest's arm, a wayward pet finally let back in from the cold.

What's one more?

Lara stood then, more sudden than she expected. The child averted its gaze, its tiny mind aware it had nothing to offer.

Lara regarded the priest and the weight of truth, of consequences, of social graces, of mercy, of all the things moving through her, pleading their case for release.

Your pendulum has become an axe, sister. Rao soon grows so bright, no love can shield your eyes from his wrath.

The child openly stared now, the priest uncomfortable. I don't understand.

Rao speaks to you for the last time. Please hurry home. Hurry home to your wife, or husband; to your boys and kept girls. Gather them up and tell them Rao loves them. That Rao didn't turn his back on us, the Science Academy did. You and I and they and them, are Kryptonians to the end.

Lara turns away now, spent, guilty at the burden she should have kept secret.

Rao be with you, the priest says softly, in her wake.

Rao be with us all, Lara returns, by rote, her grandmother's voice, she's sure.


	2. Chapter 02

Beneath the tram the spires of Kandor twinkled in reds and purples, the glassy edges smeared by forward motion, like eyes watering at the oncoming apocalypse. Millions of souls, generations upon generation, about their lives with the blind confidence of another dawn oncoming.

Lara pushed herself against the window, perhaps to avoid contact, perhaps with the hope she would pitch headlong, to die hours before those that watched her fall.

Around a bend and sloping down to a station, the tram slid to a stop, walking distance to her destination.

So she walked.

Jor-El, her husband, was where she left him, the Orrery, the machinations of a distant solar system rotating slowly around him. Bent over a data entry port, he paused work for the time it took to greet her. A soft touch, out of character.

How long, she asked.

For a moment he wondered what specific thing they waited on she meant. But it was clear in the pause she meant all of it.

He motioned the craft. Dominating the chamber, an inelegant monster of metal and fiber poked upward toward high arched ceilings. A prototype, function overruling design. To call it a rocket ship perhaps two generations too early. A future that would never come.

The ship is ready. The Brainiac is online and doesn't seem to be throwing any errors.

Lara examined the ship, as she had done hundreds of times before, every day this year and nearly as many last. Before that, the schematics, the plans. The arguments about resources, about the time it would take, about the infinite increasing complexity in making it large enough for three of them, then two, then only one.

Every day since her husband discovered the end of the world.

How much time do we have?

Soon. His fingers made the symbol for an hour or less. Then Jor-El went back to work, those alien digits moving across a large work panel rigged to the craft.

Have you already put him aboard?

He's comfortable.

She moved to a door, exiting the chamber, but keeping the door open. Their living quarters, such as they were these past two years. She pulled open a drawer, dug down into the stack of clothes. Emerged with a neatly folded garment.

Within the craft, her infant son, Kal, stretched out his tiny fingers in anticipation of contact. His eyes, like hers, multiple, insect like, flickered his excitement. Wrapped in blue blankets, yellow trim, the colors that matched the Science Academy robes both his parents wore.

He can't even focus on our faces yet, she said, reaching out so he could grasp her hand. He won't even know what we look like.

He'll be able to see through walls.

He won't remember what we look like, she said softer, pleading.

The holograms are exact representations. He'll always have us.

He won't be able to hold my hand, she said softly, watching her son's fingers play over hers.

Jor-El pulled up a string of data. These biological subroutines are perfect, Lara. This is beautiful work.

He has to blend in with them. He has to be perfect.

He will be.

From nighttime windows, red light crept down the wall, across the ceiling, over the floor. The warmth of the day gone, there was no comfort in it. Like a chill up the spine. Like blood leaving the system. If their blood was red.

Jor-El entered a final wave of data. The craft began to glow softly, rebuking the very sun it sought escape from.

Come say goodbye to your son, Jor.

Jor-El walked her side. He reached in to touch Kal's face, gently, as if he would live long enough to forget what he looked like. As if he would live long enough for the pressure on his finger tips to fade.

Lara folded Kal's arm over his chest and wrapped a corner of the blue blanket over it. Then placed the neatly folded garment on his chest.

Another blanket?

My old prayer robes.

All the strength was leaving her. Rao be with him.

Rao be with us all. Jor-El adjusted the folded red robe, tucking it tightly into the craft's infant-sized cockpit. Unceremoniously, he shut it, locking the child within. Lara ran her hand over the seam, as if her fingers could see through walls, for one last glimpse.

The ceiling opened slowly, the rich, red light shifting the world monochromatic.

Did your brother finish?

Yes. By Zor's calculations, Kara arrives several planetary months before Kal. She'll be able to take care of him, guide him.

Lara laughed lightly. The best a teenager can, you mean.

They stepped back, to the living quarters, eyes on the craft, their bodies folded into each other, arms wrapped. The craft rose, slowly at first. As it cleared the rooftop, it hung, paused, the only star in the ever brightening nighttime sky. Lara imagined he was looking back at her, one last time, and she smiled, like she spotted a friend on a crowded street corner. She started to raise her hand to wave when the inevitability washed over her, thick with the light, and she realized she hadn't taken a breath, for minutes, or hours, or all the years leading up to this last moment in her life, and she exhaled, deflated, anything left unfinished, unsaid, to remain so for eternity.

With a noiseless flash, the craft streaked up, up in the sky, and vanished, never to return.

Jor and Lara-El sat down, on the edge of the bed they had shared most of their adult lives.

Their hands intertwined. They looked ahead, then down. Lara leaned sideways, her cranial ridges nesting in the grooves in Jor's skull.

I wished they had listened, he said, absently, his anger long since faded into acceptance.

She closed her eyes. She brushed the filaments off her face, tucking them behind her ear.

Jor-El smiled. So out of character.

The disk of the sun rose over the horizon, a cruel prank of hope, as it expanded exponentially. The sky faded. From red to orange to white.

The heat wave washed over them and Krypton scattered. All that was and all there would ever be, returned to Rao's embrace.


	3. Chapter 03

The window was supposed to help with the claustrophobia and perhaps under perfect conditions, it could.

There was a moment, at the beginning, where it felt like an elevator, where the ceiling crept closer, in slow motion, where a tingle formed in her stomach, her chest, crawled downward, spread outward, then set upon her skin like a million tiny insects. Where she could feel her head filaments rustle as if caught in a soft breeze washing over her. Then the acceleration kicked in, and the stars started to blur, come at her, and she thought to herself the window was supposed to help with the claustrophobia, but it didn't, and her body collapsed inward with fear.

Kara Zor-El met her cousin Kal two days after he was born, his eyes still milky white, his head smooth as a stone from a creek, and just as misshapen. Inside she danced, imagining herself rocking side to side, from foot to foot. Outside, she stayed still, calm, betraying nothing to her father and uncle, to prove she could behave, and to not embarrass her mother, who had lobbied so hard to include her in the visit.

Kara wanted to gather him up, rub him across her face to inhale his scent, run her fingers across the spots in his head where his ridges would eventually push their way through. She had never seen anything more amazing, more beautiful, than her tiny cousin. She imagined him growing up, growing older, playing with him in the yard, teaching him numbers, helping him pick out his first science robes (because, of course he would go into science), his first date, his wife, and his first child; who would also be the most impossible, amazing, beautiful thing she could imagine.

Mother, may I touch his hand?

Of course, Allura said, ignoring Jor-El's stiffening posture.

Kara would have normally missed the subtle change entirely, but she was so focused on doing things right, to not, ever, embarrass her mother in front of her uncle. She caught the motion in her left eyes, paused, to what felt like an eternity, unsure of how to proceed. Lara, so much more aware of her husband and his moods, stepped forward and took Kara's hand, laying it gently on Kal's face.

It's okay, she said quietly. Don't worry about Uncle Jor, he'll be okay.

Kara blushed and murmured thank you, too quietly for her Aunt to hear, but Lara's smile indicated she knew what Kara's bowed head meant. Lara stepped over to Jor-El and gently lead him to where Kara's parents sat, and the adults concerned themselves with things adults concern themselves with. She had more important things.

Kara ran her hand over Kal's face, over those as yet imaginary ridges, gently, around his eyes, over his nose, to that tiny, tiny chin. She leaned closer, knowing Kal couldn't see more than a smear of color where she was, but wanting him to get used to her scent, the sound of her voice as she whispered to him, greetings, hopes, promises for the future.

Kal reached up and gripped her finger, tugged it, perhaps to suckle, or practice his bite. Several minutes too late, she realized she had been touching him way longer than appropriate for a first meeting and she suddenly sat and folded her hands and waited for admonishment that never came and after waiting she prayed. To Rao. To the lesser gods. Cythonna, the infertile. Yuda, whose outward love her uncle would disapprove of. To Telle, Mordo, and Lorra. She prayed for blessings, and future favors. When she felt she'd prayed enough and no scolding voice came to shoo her away, she leaned over onto the crib and rested her fingertips on Kal's head, hoping she could leave them there forever.

On the tram ride home, her parents sat her between them, something they hadn't done since she was child. She wanted desperately to sit by the window. Ahead, right now, across the flatlands, at night, there was nothing to see. But, later, and far away, Argo City, home, was coming.

The Koros outcropping blocked the view of the city upon approach. First, these miles of darkness, encompassing, as if the world had not yet been painted. Then, a short streak of grey and lesser blacks as the tram rounds the last stony corner.

Finally, suddenly, Argo City appears, and a more spectacular reveal, she could not imagine. Lights and motion, irregular spires punching the atmosphere, draped in tram rails. A neon beehive, stuffed to the brim and tossed to the ground, each broken piece surrounded with a million tiny glows seeking to find their way back in.

It continued to fill her with the same delight she felt the very first time she saw it. But it was easier to see from the window seat.

Did you enjoy your visit, Kara?

Very much. Thank you, mother, for letting me come.

You were very well behaved.

Her father was silent on the matter, but she took that as a show of agreement. Her father, much like his brother, was quick to voice opinion and equally at ease not adding unnecessary comment.

Allura glanced up at Zor, giving him a soft nod. Zor-El had already produced a small tablet, smoothing unfolding it to rest in his lap. In the darkness around them the light of it brushed a small pool on their faces, like monks over a candle.

Kara tried to piece together what she was being shown. There was a globe, a planet she supposed, based on her family's predilection for things beyond Krypton. It rotated slowly, a calming tint of blue, white and greens. He wiped away the data flow around the images. Her father knew she got motion sickness from reading on the tram. The other images seemed to be animals of some sort, similar to each other, but in a range of colors and secondary characteristics. Smooth, plain features, two eyes, various head decoration.

Are these animals of some sort? she asked him, not taking her eyes off the screen.

Of a sort, yes. Do you like any of them better than the others?

Kara didn't understand the question. I don't know, I'm not sure I have enough information. Do I get to know habits or what they eat or anything like that?

That's not really important for the question, her mother said softly. Just based on how they look, which one do you like the most?

They weren't trying to hurry herm, but she didn't want to give a wrong answer. So, finally, she pointed. This one.

Are you sure? Her father tilted the screen up to make sure she got a full view.

Kara nodded. I like her yellow head covering.

It's a protein filament, we think, Allura said, glancing up for confirmation from Zor-El. Like yours, she said, running her fingers through Kara's filaments, but it doesn't have any nerve endings, so you can't feel anything with it.

Oh. What's the point of that, then?

Her father pushed the other images out of the way and enlarged the one Kara had chosen. Well, you can lengthen or shorten it various ways, for display.

Kara reached out and rotated the figure, moved part of it around. What are these things, papa? Where do they live?

Your cousin Kal has to take a trip.

Kara turned to face her mother. Okay.

We want you to go with him. To look after him.

Kara quickly looked back and forth between her parents. This time a little of the dance spilled to the outside.

Zor-El folded the tablet up and glanced around, making sure no one noticed Kara's excitement. The other passengers kept to themselves or were sleeping away the time to Argo City.

Allura set her hand gently on Kara's face. Honey, this is important.

Kara flushed, embarrassed, and obeyed, as quickly as she could contain herself. Calm down, she told herself, until she did.

Your father and I have all the confidence you'll do a good job. That you'll be brave.

What do I to do? Where are we going?

Your uncle Jor-El is programming a Brainiac for you. It will teach you everything you need to know on the way.

Where are we going? Are you going to be there? Is Lara and Jor?

Her mother looked away, unable to continue.

Your mother and I won't be there, Kara, nor will your aunt and uncle. You'll be on your own.

Kara took her mother's hand, pulling it gently to regain her attention. What's going on?

Allura took Kara's face in her hands. Kara. Everything is going to be okay. We can't tell you why you need to go and we're sorry we can't come. She paused. The abstract notion about lying to her daughter came to reality, quickly, violently, despite months in preparation.

You'll only be gone for a little while. When you get back, we'll tell you everything.

Okay.

You have to be brave.

Okay. I will.

Allura continued to hold Kara's face, their eyes matching motion, color.

I'll be brave, mommy, I promise.

And she was, even as she learned more about her journey to the other planet, and how she would need to help Kal on this new world. She studied the therianthropy aunt Lara had designed into Brainiac. During the journey Brainiac would alter them, so both her and her cousin would blend in with the natives. So smooth, so plain. She got to help Lara pick out a suitable skin for Kal.

She learned how hard it was to build her ship, that her father had marshaled all their resources just for hers. Her father explained how much harder it was to build for two, how impossible it was for three, how she was special, how her cousin was special, and she believed, and she was brave, and she did not embarrass her mother by asking questions that, in the end, didn't matter.

Of course she was going.

When she returned, when she was transformed back into the form Rao had blessed her with, they would tell her everything. They would be so proud of her and she would be so proud of herself, for what she had done.

She tried to be brave, as the forward motion smeared the stars like a million tiny drops of dew sliding down glass, as her body was set to the uncontrollable tingle like a million insects, turning her excitement to anxiousness, then confusion.

In the distance, over the horizon of Krypton, Rao swelled, and vanished, and for a moment she was in the tram, rounding that last rocky spire, in a world not yet painted, fingers wiggling for the bright reveal.

Then a wave of blinding light washed over her home planet and it shattered like a dropped plate.

G-forces pitched her sideways as the shock wave slapped her ship. Sparks showered around her, bounced off the inside of the window, a glorious fireworks display for her eyes only, until they landed hot and smoking, on her clothing and skin.

Kara, we are off course.

Brainiac, what happened? Someone was shouting and she realized it was her.

Query not recognized.

Where's Krypton?

Query not recognized.

Brainiac, I want to talk to my father!

Kara tried to make sense of the navigation display, but a long crack bisected it, the data falling across the gap like water draining.

Concussive force ripped the metal around her, threated to crush the meager inches of space around her. Something solid struck the ship, causing an echoing peal of thunder.

Brainiac!

Query not recognized.

She tried to be brave, but the window wasn't helping and someone was screaming, their throat numbing from the pain, and she realized it was her.


	4. Chapter 04

As the sun set, the sky turned orange, then red, across scattered clouds like flowers at bloom. The land below stretched as far as the eye could see, warm summer breeze tangled forever with waving grasses.

Under that sky had roamed all manner of man, and once, vast herds of bison. The Niukonska, people of the middle waters, laid claim to these lands. The French settlers called them Osage, as they had made a home near the Osage river, in what would eventually become Missouri, on the planet Earth.

Tan-skinned warriors, fiercely tall, feathered and painted, they fought with lances decorated with the blood of their enemies: the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Kickapoo. The Kiowa, once gathered up in the weathered crags of the Wichita Mountains and slaughtered to the last woman and child.

In bitter battles for land, the Cherokee rode into Pasona and Pasuga, the Osage men away to hunt, and murdered or captured the woman and children, old and infirmed, burned, looted, leaving nothing behind save vultures, black and opportunistic. When the hunting parties returned to the scorched plain that had been home, the Osage men set ambush, and for twenty years extracted gory revenge.

White men, the Spanish, the French, English turned American, came for fur, for railroads that moved cattle from the north to Texas. The Americans, with the Cherokee, drove the Osage to Kansas, where corn turns to wheat, soft in the summer, hard for the winter, abandoning Missouri, Arkansas, and, for a time, Oklahoma.

Smallpox ravaged their numbers.

The Osage allied with Armstrong Custer against the Cheyenne.

Civil War turned their horses and food into war and famine.

Lawrence, Kansas, burned to the ground.

Kansas seemed at ease to both reservations and freed slaves, Exodusters, and provided a base for the subjugation of all the first nations.

An Osage man married an American woman, with little regard to customs or approval. They settled in this land, Kansas, to put blood, war, famine, and that subjugation to the past.

There was born a son, who grew up, a generation after the Osage, the Choctaw, the Kickapoo and Kiowa, the Cherokee, and the Cheyenne. Then, a generation after the native man married the American woman, the land turned to dust and blew away.

Raised in dust, in drought, in hardship, Jack Kent, breathing dirt, spent his seventh year on Earth watching the soil change day to night, watching his father's farm turn to ruin, and watching his mother gasp a last, labored breath, her lungs choked with the land wrested from the Osage a hundred years before he was born.

He spent that summer killing rabbits. Black tailed jackrabbits, no natural predators left, starving, eating what's left of the grasses, were herded into pens, ten thousand or more at once, and all the children of Smallville, Kansas, met them with sticks and stones, clubs, axe handles, and hammers. The rabbits' screams were like the cries of infants, their corpses piled in barbed wired corners to rot.

The fortunate jackrabbits suffocated in the open, the dust so thick headlights were swallowed up and men couldn't find their porch from the yard.

Less than ten years later, Jack's father and step-mother went to Coffeyville, to work maintenance, and secretarial work for the Army, and Jack went off to kill Nazis. The barren farm was a bitter reminder of everything they had fought for and everything they had lost.

Jack returned to Smallville some years later, to lay his father to rest in the overgrown yard where he grew up, his step-mother long since passed.

Standing at that forsaken farm, his hands rough, calloused, stained with the blood of man and beast alike, Jack set to work restoring the only happy place he had ever known. He woke before the dawn and quit as the glorious yellow sun settled red in the west.

The years peeled away, until, finally, again, soft wheat grew in the summer and hard wheat grew in the winter.

Jack's son Jonathan, born with the rebirth of a nation, knew hard work, but never knew hardship. Jonathan buried Jack next to his father, secure in the knowledge that Jack had lead a worthwhile life and had spent the last decade at peace. He had rose just before dawn, and every evening he watched the sunset, sometimes sharing a cigarette with Jonathan. He told Jonathan stories about the land and its bloody history, about his parents, and their parents, about the worth of human life, the will to fight and do right.

Jonathan loved the farm and, because of that, it was in good hands. Strong hands, worn thick from hard work.

He married Martha Clark, who he had known since they chased each other in Elementary school. Martha had no skill or desire for farming, but she was good with numbers, and under her guidance, the farm modernized, prospered, flourished.

He didn't remember how many miscarriages she had before they gave up having children, but she did. When pregnancy became a chore, when her fear outweighed her excitement, she knew it was time to move on. She became quieter then.

He would find her at the gravestones, planting flowers, clearing off leaves. Sometimes talking quietly to Jack. Perhaps there was a heaven and he gave her comfort from the afterlife.

Clark didn't know how he arrived in their lives, only that they told him he appeared when they stopped looking. He knew his mother was almost always happy, as if he had been left under the Christmas tree by elves.

His parents doted on each other, shared a kind of love he could only hope to capture one day. They spoiled him, told him about the farm, about his grandparents, about Kansas. Occasionally they told him about mankind's ability to destroy each other over scraps of land, when there was room enough for everyone.

They got him pets, a dog, several farm cats, a hutch full of rabbits with silly names. He learned from a young age to care for them, instilled with a sense of worth, a sense of empathy for all God's creatures, and the difference between pets and food.

Like his mother, he didn't take to farming, a source of exaggerated consternation from his father. Nor, however, did he take to numbers. The playing field for his parent's bragging rights was still open.

He was a sensitive child, but stood up for himself. He was selfless, but firm in conviction, and he knew the difference between right and wrong. He made mistakes, as all children do, but, he took the lesson well.

Like Jonathan, Clark had caught his mother talking to Jack once or twice. He wished he had known his grandfather, but Clark lived in the present. Secure in where he came from, in where he was going.

In high school, he studied medicine, perhaps to be a vet, perhaps a doctor.

The day Clark laid Jonathan to rest, beside Jack, beside his grandfather, his mother's sunflowers caught the last of the golden light. Martha rocked slowly on the porch, silent, as she'd been for nearly the day. Jonathan's lap cat, the mackerel tabby, pushes his head against her calf, over and over again, providing solace for them both.

Clark kept his distance, he knew his mother.

Over the next few days Clark focused on the farm, crawling numb from bed before dawn, pushing back up on the porch at sunset. He cried, sometimes with embarrassment, holding his hot face in the crook of his arm, or squinting his eyes in hopes they'd hold in tears. Sometime he cried openly, proudly, loud enough his mother would hear, perhaps his father, as well.

Martha talks again, sliding into it like she never quit. Small talk, at first, then gradually, beautifully, stories about his father. Her husband. The son of Jack Kent and grandson of a man beaten down by very land he pledged his soul to.

Clark, into his 20s, sat with his mother on the porch, sometimes sharing a cigarette, sometimes stories about his father that she didn't know.

The mackerel tabby was buried in the flower garden, nutrients for the sunflowers.

Looking back, these were his favorite memories of his mother. Not the laughter of when he was young, or the look on her face when she saw him each morning. Not the joy she took in flirting with her husband, or the quiet she took in the end of each day.

It was the evenings on the porch, after his father died.

When he was old enough to understand her sacrifices, her pain, her happiness. When he watched her sadness turn to comfort, then anticipation when her time grew near. When she had told him all the stories a hundred times over, until he felt like he had lived all the lives down the generations shared with him. A land that had cycled between blood and dirt, now cycled between wheat and sunset.

She was the last Kent to be buried on the farm.

In the future, it became a historical site, the plaque brushing away the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Kickapoo and the Kiowa (once gathered up in the weathered crags of the Wichita Mountains and slaughtered to the last woman and child.) It brushed away the French and the Spanish, the unusual union between Osage man and American woman. It brushed away rabbits and Nazis. Dust so thick it sent people to early graves, and blotted out the sun. It even brushed away Jonathan and Martha, and their joy of watching ravaged land succumb to amber waves of grain.

Here is the Kent Farm, it reads. The birthplace of Earth's greatest hero, Superman.

Clark, however, never forgot the stories his father told him and his mother repeated. He never forgot the bitter, savage lessons learned from man's history and the very land itself.

He never forgot his mother's smile, on that last day, of having lived a joyous life. Her calm as she closed her eyes for the last time, his hand in hers. Her skin as thin as tissue, her bones riddled with arthritis.

He cried openly then, with no pretense of otherwise.

And then he woke up.


End file.
